In fights where it is necessary to kite a target, Crippling Poison can also help a great deal.

Kick is an invaluable tool in stopping enemy casters and healers. Keep tabs on any enemy magic users. If they are preparing a spell, a well-placed Kick can silence them temporarily, occasionally sending them running into the melee, where they are much less dangerous. If Kick is still cooling down, Gouge can be used in a pinch.

When engaging with casters, the use of Shiv and Mind Numbing Poison on your off-hand weapon can be extremely useful, Especially with healing mobs as they usually only heal when they are about to die and the cast time increase gives you longer to finish them off.

Sap is incredibly useful in managing the number of enemies in a fight. As of Patch 2.1, Sap no longer breaks stealth, which significantly reduces the danger to a rogue tasked with knocking out a mob. This also means that a party with more than one rogue can more easily Sap multiple targets.

In the fight

There are a few important safety tips that can increase your usefulness as a rogue.

Opening a fight with Cheap Shot is often a bad idea, as stunning the target can prevent a warrior or druid tank from taking damage and thus building rage. A tank with little or no rage will not be able to protect you! The obvious exception to this is fighting solo or taking out a target the tank has not engaged.

There are very few scenarios where Expose Armor is a wise use of combo points.

Using Expose Armor can cause a warrior to receive the error "A more powerful spell is already active" when trying to use Sunder Armor. Being completely unable to use this ability can seriously reduce his aggro. Also, if he can't use it once, he obviously can't stack 5 levels of the ability. As mentioned previously, a single Expose Armor does not weaken the target's armor nearly as much as 5 Sunder Armors, and this means that the party will do less damage. This is not an issue if a druid or paladin is the main character tanking.

In a multi-mob encounter, a rogue can occupy one enemy by stun-locking them. This will keep the monster stunned almost constantly, and once the group has killed off the monster they're fighting, they can move on to the stun-locked mob. Once the group switches to the stun-locked mob, the rogue should usually stop stunning it.

Staying alive

Rogues are usually way down the list for heals. If you are dead you are not contributing DPS, so don't be afraid to back out of a fight and bandage if you need to.

Many bosses have AoE or 360-degree attacks. Watch out for these as they can very quickly kill you in your leather armour.

Cloak of Shadows is a vital ability in fights where you might expect magic-based burst or DoT effects.

Don't steal aggro from the Tank, as this will almost certainly get you killed as the mob or boss focuses their (usually impressive) damage-dealing abilities on you. Use an addon such as Omen to monitor your threat and don't hesitate to Feint or even Vanish if you are in danger of taking aggro.

DoT abilities, in general, do just as much damage (if not more) than instant-damage abilities and generate less threat. If the mob is not immune to Bleeds, use Garrote and Rupture in preference to Ambush and Eviscerate.

Don't follow a Stealthed rogue if you don't have a similarly sneaky ability. The last thing a rogue wants while trying to sap an enemy is some plate-wearing, axe-wielding idiot standing on his heels.

Don't use a rogue as main assist in a raid. Raid members in other parties cannot assist a Stealthed rogue. However, in single parties, rogues make excellent main assists.

The order of crowd control abilities is very important. As Sap only affects creatures out of combat, it must be the first crowd control ability used before a fight. This means that everyone else in the party must wait to use their crowd control abilities (Polymorph, Banish, etc).